GhazzyTV - Essence Drain & Contagion (or Bane/Soulrend) Trickster [SC/HC/Uber Elder/Shaper]

Hope you guys can help me

Im thinking of buying the Bow but im worried about becoming squishy since im using these.



Also how much of a dps boost is it switching to a Bow

Thanks.

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Kaboinglefop wrote:

Bane is not smoother, faster, and better in all ways, especially with the current league mechanic. Contagion's ability to proliferate off-screen is much more powerful and smoother once you have enough cast speed.

It is even more potent in delves, where a single ED+Cont cast can be walked from the start to the end of a node.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion bane>cont for clearing as a trickster.

I agree, contagion is the way for clearing out full screens, however for popping packs that are not close to other packs, I am using a 5l bane setup and it works great for that.

In my experience, it does not need to be one or the other. They can play well off of each other depending on the scenario

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DotBad wrote:

Hope you guys can help me

Im thinking of buying the Bow but im worried about becoming squishy since im using these.

Also how much of a dps boost is it switching to a Bow

Thanks.

You will become squishier when using a bow. In my case once I went bow/quiver I changed out of EB and took up MOM instead because I felt like my defences took a hit.

That said, DPS is far better with a decked out bow.

"

Heavyweight87 wrote:

As a newbie whos trying to go the soulrend route, thanks for this!
I imported your character and created a POB link:
https://pastebin.com/Rub0FJDJ

Wondered if you cared to explain some of the skill tree differences?

Oh sweet! The main differences in my tree is the decision to forego Eldritch Battery and not travelling down to the Acrobatics section of the tree. this is because The Perfect Form gives me Phase Acrobatics, While The Devouring Diadem gives me EB. I also decided to give Wicked Ward a shot, and so far it's felt useful, although I think the build would do just fine without it. With all the extra points I didn't need to spend on the two Keystones granted by my gear, I took the whispers of doom cluster to dual curse with Bane. Other than that, my tree's not *that* much different. I may have made a sub-optimal choice in grabbing those mana nodes to get my Watcher's Eye in there. But thus far I'm happy with it.

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Kaboinglefop wrote:

Bane is not smoother, faster, and better in all ways, especially with the current league mechanic. Contagion's ability to proliferate off-screen is much more powerful and smoother once you have enough cast speed.

It is even more potent in delves, where a single ED+Cont cast can be walked from the start to the end of a node.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion bane>cont for clearing as a trickster.

Bane is more of of a utility skill IMO. I only use it when I need it. Usually for tanky-ass rares and bosses. Summon a few Blight totems, cast Bane, and then spam Soulrend and they are basically deleted. For general mapping/delving Soulrend is doing all the work, with occasional Bane casts here and there. Personally, I prefer that playstyle over ED/Contagion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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xsnowingx wrote:

You have no life on your chest, and yet you are using a Devouring Diadem. Another example of this guide absolutely f****** over complete newbs rofl

The simplest thing u could do is buy a deafening essence of greed and scour your chest so you can slam that on it and call it a day.

Lmao, have you ever read what your ascendancy notables do?? Body armour (if we're talking about non-unique armour) in this build must have either ~2k+ evasion (and you would have to run discipline/ have much more ES on other gear in this case) or, even better, 1800+ evasion 400+ ES, which is like 700 base ES chest for a trickster that takes escape artist. And in the latter case you can't get life on it, guess why?
Besides, if he wanted to use the essence, there would be no need to scour, because high-tier essences can reroll mods in the same fashion as chaos orbs.
Devouring Diadem allows us to save like 4 points that can be spent on jewel sockets.

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CrocSw wrote:

any tips?

really squishy here.

You want to have like at least 4+k life and your ES should be equal to 3/7 of your life.
Get rid of chayula's presence. IDK why would you even have that when you are life, MoM-EB based (unequipping presence gives you like 1k life lol, and you are like 100 ES short of meeting the 3/7 requirement with discipline active, your total EHP with presence right now = 5255, if you remove it and get a little bit of maximum ES somewhere to bump it to 1971, your EHP will be 6570). Buy an elder amulet with 13+% non-ailment damage over time multiplier instead.
Get a hybrid chest with 1800+evasion and 400+ES. Most of your energy shield will come from here. If you want to continue using a shield, get one with 200-300+ES, check how much ES you need exactly in PoB after you buy the chest - no need to overpay for extra ES you will not use (again, ES must be around 3/7 of life for efficiency, if you have less - you will run out of ES while still having life and will be unable to cast, if you have too much ES - it will not be protecting you).
After you upgrade body armour and sheild, you will not need discipline. Get rid of zealotry, run flesh and stone in sand stance (a very important layer of defense), buy a beast and craft aspect of the spider somewhere on your gear (malevolence 50% + flesh and stone 25% + aspect of the spider 25% = 100% mana reserved). See if you can fit in a coral ring with a hybrid temple mod that gives 70+life and 5%increased max life.

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Denezen wrote:

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DotBad wrote:

Hope you guys can help me

Im thinking of buying the Bow but im worried about becoming squishy since im using these.

Also how much of a dps boost is it switching to a Bow

Thanks.

You will become squishier when using a bow. In my case once I went bow/quiver I changed out of EB and took up MOM instead because I felt like my defences took a hit.

That said, DPS is far better with a decked out bow.

Thanks man the reason i asked is i feel like im killing the guardians and Shaper abit too slow for my liking

any of the timeless jewels good for this build?

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chaoval wrote:

Lmao, have you ever read what your ascendancy notables do?? Body armour (if we're talking about non-unique armour) in this build must have either ~2k+ evasion (and you would have to run discipline/ have much more ES on other gear in this case) or, even better, 1800+ evasion 400+ ES, which is like 700 base ES chest for a trickster that takes escape artist. And in the latter case you can't get life on it, guess why?

Spoiler

Because there is no free prefix for a life mod on such chests.

Ok you're actually totally right. I had forgotten how much ES I was getting from my chest, and I'm not even speccing into the %ES nodes. That's a pretty big deal and my advice was wrong :)

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any of the timeless jewels good for this build?

brutal restraint with onslaught on kill